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Geno

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Having trouble deciding...

A long time ago I started playing Guild Wars. Had lots of fun with the PvP, thought the PvE was decent. But then I made the decision to try and achieve the "God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals" achievement, not quite knowing what I was getting into at the time.  
 
For those not very familiar with the game, I'll put GWAMM in general terms. You need to achieve 30 titles. A title is awarded upon completion of a major task; completing all of a region's missions with 100% completion is enough for one title. Exploring literally every inch of the map in a region (of which there are 3) is another title. They range from rather short (can be completed in a few days of regular gaming) to extremely long (requiring accruing of vast amounts of wealth and/or completing long/hard tasks). GWAMM is the highest achievement in Guild Wars and overall, probably takes more than a thousand hours to achieve for the average player.  
 
Due to judicious planning to complete GWAMM titles synergistically and relatively high competence, I've managed to cut the time down to a fraction necessary. At the moment, I'm 97% done (29/30). 
 
Here's the problem though - I grossly miscalculated on the difficulty of one of the titles. I thought it would be easy when it's in fact, probably the hardest. The Wisdom title involves identifying 10,000 gold items. In Guild Wars, gold items are relatively rare and even if you were strictly farming them you'll get at most about 20-30 every hour. I originally thought that by the end of my adventures doing all of the other titles the amount of gold items left for me to identify would be nominal, but that is not the case - I still have thousands and thousands to go. Conservative estimates as to the time required to get the rest is about 200 hours of straight farming.  
 
Farming in any MMO is not very fun. Farming for several dozens of hours - even less so. Even spreading the 200 hours across the span of a year would be a task, since I don't really have time to play the game anymore (and 2011 will be jam-packed with quality titles).  
 
Now we arrive at the question that is met at some point by all MMO players - does spending the extra time justify the time already spent? If I spend the 200 hours (which could well be 300) finishing up the title, I can cite a major accomplishment in my gaming history (plus the title will follow me into Guild Wars 2) but it will also drain a substantial amount of my free time (and sanity) which I could spend on frankly more productive activities like jogging for an hour a day or playing games that I actually enjoy. But if I relinquish my quest to get the achievement, I'll have nothing to show for the significant amount of time and effort I've already put into the game. 
 
To some of you the answer may be obvious, "only play games if you enjoy it, duh", which is true, but I feel it's also a little more complicated than that. I'll certainly enjoy finally getting GWAMM, and I'll also certainly enjoy flaunting it around in Guild Wars 2. But I won't enjoy the hundreds of hours of monotonous activity required for me to finish up the last title to get it. It's just very hard for me to decide. 

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